


Such sphinx’s riddles

by middlemarch



Series: DeQuincey's iPad [1]
Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Divorce, Doctors & Physicians, Drug Addiction, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 03:06:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7557724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jed has one chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such sphinx’s riddles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tvsn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvsn/gifts).



Jed Foster was fucked. Like, seriously fucked and for once, it wasn’t clear he could get out of it. He’d thought it was bad enough when Clay reported him to the state medical board and he’d been referred to the impaired physicians’ program; he’d agreed to go to the first rehab that would take him, he’d agreed to everything they’d asked for the chance to get his license reinstated and save his career. At least it had been Clay, who was discreet and hadn’t talked about it with anyone else; if he’d been caught by Byron Hale, it wouldn’t have mattered what the medical board said—his career in Boston, hell, in New England would have been over. He would have needed to be willing to move across the country to escape the gossip, take whatever crappy community hospital job he could find, and then he would have lost Owen entirely because Eliza wouldn’t have followed him.

He’d thought he was fucked when Eliza told him she was filing for divorce and that if he didn’t do whatever the mediator said, she’d take him to court and seek sole placement, “and you know I’ll get it, Jed.” He’d only see his son during supervised visits for a few hours on a weekend. The mediator had largely agreed with the impaired physicians’ program, plus some co-parenting counseling, which all in all didn’t seem that bad except that he still wouldn’t be living with his son full time and that was going to be true regardless. The marriage was over. They’d worked out an uneasy détente which included Jed staying in the guest room until he went to rehab and Owen watched a lot of PBS Kids while Jed and Eliza tried to negotiate how Jed could spend time with Owen for the time being. Jed had surprised them both when he broke down crying at the kitchen table shortly after bringing Owen the cup of water for his stuffed frog Mooky. They’d both known it was a ploy but Eliza had waved him towards Owen’s tasteful jungle themed bedroom and Jed had sat with his son, stroking his dark curls as the little boy fell asleep, the nightlight softening the shadows. The overlarge giraffe in the corner that Owen never once played with kept watch. Back in the kitchen, Jed had tried to be angry at Eliza, but then she’d said, 

“I’m Owen’s mother first and I’ll always make sure he’s safe. You know that’s the right thing to do, Jed. If-- when you’re clean, then you can be alone with him, but not until then, not now. You know I can’t trust you yet, I can’t afford to. Not with my baby.”

She’d been right. To sit in the kitchen with her, drinking the tea she’d offered in colorfully mismatched Fiestware mugs—it should have been comfortable, it should have been their kitchen on a Tuesday night, but it was all falling apart. He was due to leave for rehab on Thursday and he had never been away from his son for more than a two day conference since Owen was born. He had a chance, a good chance to get most of his life back, which was more than most addicts had, but he didn’t think he had more than one. The tears came before he was even aware of them. Eliza had gotten up, done something, he couldn’t say because he was crying so hard, and then he felt her hand cool on the back of his neck. The other reached around him to put a box of tissue within his grasp. He’d thought she would just walk away then and he’d be headed to the grey and ivory guest room with its Matook hotel linens improbably impersonal in his own house but instead, she’d just waited for him to calm down a little. When he was finishing wiping his face, she spoke again, 

“I haven’t been in love with you for a long time, Jed, I think you figured that out… but I want, I’d like to like you again, not just for Owen’s sake. You need to get your shit together, you just need to get your shit together, Jed, for real. I can’t, I won’t let you hurt Owen… he’s so little, if you make an effort, it could be okay, not like it was—but maybe that’s not a bad thing. Even without the drugs, I don’t think we would have lasted… Just, you need to think about our son. First. And last. Every day.”

He’d made a sort of shrug-nod to indicate he agreed with her and her hand dropped away.

“I’m going to take him to the Vineyard while you’re away, we’ll stay at Clare’s. He’ll have a good time with Ryan and Lucy, I think it’ll help,” she’d added. 

His sister Clare probably knew more than anyone on either side of the family and had been pretty non-judgmental, especially considering the way they’d been raised. Eliza had agreed to keep the details from her parents and his mother for now but had made it clear that if he didn’t fulfill the terms of his treatment, discretion was going right out the window as she did whatever she thought she needed to make “a stable home for Owen… I’ll go back to Richmond if I have to.” Staying with Clare, her husband Nate and their two kids for several weeks was a good idea for Owen and Eliza—Owen loved playing with Ryan, who was about six months older, and Lucy, a preternaturally mature seven year old enjoyed gently bossing both boys and organizing endless compromised games where Playmobil princesses lived in Lego houses and rode on the old matchbox cars that were Ryan’s chief treasure. Eliza and Clare always got along well, even when he and Eliza had been struggling, and Clare had managed not only not taking sides, but somehow obviating the idea of sides. He felt a little better imagining Owen on the beach with his cousins, all of them zinc coated wherever rash-guards didn’t cover, so that they looked like a trio of friendly little ghosts. It was easier than imagining rehab and he’d rather do what was easy.

He’d been motivated at the rehab and sufficiently cowed by the other patients’ stories of all the myriad, jagged crevices that the world offered for “rock-bottom” that he’d finished right on time. He had nearly asked where his gold star was when they handed him the discharge paperwork. His primary therapist Bridget had bluntly told him “I think you can make it, Jed. But you can’t phone it in and you can’t expect it to be easy, not for a long time. Maybe not ever—you never know though, you’ve been pretty lucky your whole life. I just, I just wouldn’t count on being lucky or smart anymore as your ace in the hole. And don’t be afraid to ask for help, I know, how trite, but don’t, because I think you’re going to need it. A lot.”

He was not asking for help right now though. He was raising his voice and yelling at a pretty receptionist with dark hair and blue eyes about what the fuck had happened to his intake appointment. He’d shown up thirty minutes earlier, carefully dressed in a button down and chinos like he was going to the country club for brunch or it was a dress-down Friday so no tie with his white coat, all the intake paperwork carefully done; he’d played twenty minutes worth of whatever the mindless game was on his phone and had tried not to tap his foot impatiently. He’d waited five minutes after the scheduled time for his name, some version of it, to be called by a forgettable looking person in a floral scrub top holding a file, but nothing had happened so he’d gone up to the window to ask.

He’d started well enough, politely enough. He’d checked in and there hadn’t been any issue, but he realized the woman at the window now was not the same one. And she was evidently telling him that he didn’t have a scheduled intake, in a slow, calm voice, a hint of the Carolinas maybe, but it didn’t soothe him. At all. He’d started ranting about her incompetence, the office’s incompetence, growing louder and louder as the fear within him mounted even more. The withdrawal would be a bitch but it was Owen, Owen and his career he was worried about losing if he couldn’t establish care with an MD who’d prescribe the suboxone. It would all fall apart and then… he couldn’t think about that then, because it was a then of, then no joint custody, then no return to his clinic, his research grant, then no Christmas morning, no acceptably awkward shared birthday party with his son and his amicable ex, then no reason not to use again. 

“Do you even know who I am? If I ran this office, I’d fire you! This is a fucking travesty!” he exclaimed. He heard the echo of his father in his voice and loathed it, but it poured out of him, some horrible magma of entitlement and anger and fear. The blue-eyed woman looked at him and he couldn’t read her expression other than to sense she was about to close the window. The older man in the other corner of the waiting room appeared to be entirely absorbed with his copy of the Wall Street Journal or at least was using it as a screen against Jed’s tirade. Jed took a deep breath, but it didn’t calm him and he felt the urge to curse at the pretty receptionist, her name tag read “Emma,” when another woman stepped into the frame of the window, over Emma’s shoulder and said, 

“Hey, hey. What’s going on here? Let’s just… we can figure this out, let’s take it down a notch, okay?”

Jed glanced at her and saw an attractive brunette with a lab coat slung over her arm, her dark blouse open at the neck; he couldn’t see her name on the tag because her lanyard was dangling as she leaned over, but he caught the general font and color—Children’s, and not a resident, because she was not shyly deferential and had inserted herself right in the midst of none of her business. “Bitch,” his anger supplied, but he discarded it. She hadn’t said anything he wouldn’t have said to a belligerent patient. She had her hair in a braid, one of those crazy elaborate ones that had become trendy since the ice princess movie all Owen’s girl classmates from his Montessori preschool themed their third and fourth birthday parties with. He might have reflected more on her appearance, wondered about her legs, if he hadn’t been flooded with cortisol as he felt his life imploding around him.

“It’s a fucking disaster and unless you are the office manager, you should stay the hell out of it,” he said roughly.

“Hey, relax, it’ll be okay,” she tried. She was trying to be kind, he guessed, but it came off patronizing and who the hell was she anyway?

“I know more about this than you—it’s not going to be okay until my fucking appointment is over and I get the next one scheduled, so really, just fuck off! My entire future is predicated on this appointment and this fucking bitch is telling me I don’t have one!” he said. He saw Emma raise her hand, ready to buzz for security but the other woman put her hand on the receptionist’s shoulder to still her. Her cheeks were bright red and there was nothing frozen about her face or the way she glared at him.

“That’s enough! I know right from wrong and I know how to treat other people—and maybe, once you did as well, but you are totally out of line!”

“Mary!” Emma exclaimed softly. But Mary peered at the screen and then at Jed. Emma was rifling through a stack of charts, evidently looking for his. It felt like when the vicodin wore off, that sick misery vibrating through him. It was bad enough they were telling him he didn’t have an appointment, but now he’d ruined any chance of them helping. He’d have to spend the rest of the day calling every other suboxone provider in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, even New Hampshire, and pray that one of them had not already filled their hundred spots.

“It doesn’t look like there are any intakes scheduled this morning. Do you have the right day?” Mary asked. Her voice was calmer now and he tried, he tried to match her but the idea that he had the wrong day for the most important appointment of his life was infuriating. He wouldn’t curse again though, there was no excuse for that. He took out his cell and set it on the counter, then fished in his pocket for the appointment card, and nudged both of them towards the women.

“I can show you the confirmation email if you don’t believe me,” he said. Emma had taken the appointment card and was studying it like it was the Rosetta stone. The cell’s screensaver flicked back on.

“Your son is beautiful—he’s about four, maybe?” Mary commented. She was quick but it was not exactly a Sherlock Holmes maneuver; the screen-saver was a picture of Owen on his lap on the white front porch of his in-law’s lake house. Since Owen had been born, people had remarked on how alike they were. Eliza had used to enjoy pouting a bit about how much suffering—“a thirty-eight hour labor!” she’d gone through to be rewarded with a child who resembled her not at all. Jed could see her though, Owen had her mouth but his father’s eyes and coloring.

“Yes, in March.” Jed replied. It was July now and he hadn’t held his son in five weeks. Mary didn’t say anything else, just let the moment hang there.

“He’s with his mother now, I’m trying to get these appointments done so I can be with him… there’s no one else in Boston taking new patients for at least a month,” he offered. She’d probably already figured out he was separated from the white memory of his ring on his hand.

Mary opened her mouth about to say something—what he couldn’t imagine. The whole situation was so cocked up, a doctor who didn’t even work at the clinic stepping in to try to resolve some random scheduling issue with a furious patient, she must have an extra-special savior complex, he mused, when Emma interrupted.

“Lisette! Again. I swear, she’s just—Dr. Foster, I apologize. I found your appointment, but it was moved back a few hours, there was a conflict this morning and the other receptionist… moved things around it looks like, I don’t think she called you and she didn’t tell me. I’m very sorry for the confusion. Can you wait another half-hour? Dr. Diggs will be free then for the intake.”

“Yes, I’ll wait. It doesn’t matter, the appointment’s the only thing that matters. I’m sorry, I behaved… badly,” he replied. He looked down and saw Owen’s eyes, his happy smile. Jed had been high then, only sort of present, which he’d justified since he really didn’t like his mother-in-law but it was a piss-poor reason. He didn’t want to be that father again, didn’t want to lose his son. He’d stay however long it took, he’d come back the next day or the day after that, just to get the treatment started.

“You know, there’s a coffee cart on the second floor,” Mary offered. “Or a vending machine across the hall, but if you have a half-hour to kill… Emma, I’ll see you next week. If you see Aurelia, tell her I’ll bring samosas next time. Or Thai if she prefers. Text me if you want a bubble tea.”

Jed watched Mary bend a little to pick up her bag, and sling it on her shoulder. It looked overfull and her Littman stethoscope poked out of a pocket, a little message from the universe that he’d been right about something today. She nodded at him and walked out into the waiting room, then kept walking towards the clinic’s door. He stood there, trying to accept that once again, he’d been lucky, luckier than he deserved, and ran his hand through his hair, across his forehead. Mary paused and looked at him over her shoulder.

“What’s his name?” she asked.

“Owen. Owen Ezra,” Jed replied.

“Well, Owen’s dad, think about getting something to drink, maybe not too caffeinated. It’ll, it can be okay, it really can,” Mary said gently. She had very dark eyes, he saw that in the moment that she looked at him, dark and warm, and then she walked out of the clinic. He waited ten minutes, then made his way to the second floor where he bought two lattes, one decaf, and handed the regular one to Emma when she ushered him back to Dr. Diggs’s office. They both knew he shouldn’t have bought it and she shouldn’t take it, but he had and she did.

**Author's Note:**

> So, tsvn had wanted a gritty modern AU where Jed goes to a methadone clinic in the 90's and I wrote this instead, but it's a spirit of the law kind of situation. There are impaired physicians' boards in most states. If you want my head canon, Mary is a pediatric sub specialist at Boston Children's (I usually pick oncology or endocrinology for Mary), Samuel and Aurelia are both suboxone certified psychiatrists working at the clinic Jed is going to, and Matron Brannan was his therapist at the expensive rehab he spent over 20K to go to right away. Lisette and Clay are S2 characters I am already writing AU for :)
> 
> The title is from De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater. It seemed apt. 
> 
> I did not put any clear romance in this one, though I referenced an episode re: Jed and Mary's exchange (I know right from wrong). I did try to set it up so that if this Jed and this Mary met again, when he was clean for longer, they could actually get together without any weird boundary crossings.


End file.
